FROM MOOD BOARDS TO SURVIVAL BOARDS

One early adopter was University of Southern California’s Andrew Lih, who last October, long before he and many others knew the site would become a blockbuster, introduced it to online students in an entrepreneurial class to gather what he called a “mood board” for a project on public art. Lih explained that the students took advantage of Pinterest’s easy-to-use clipping approach to create a densely packed visual scrapbook of public and street art to identify themes that would have easily been missed had they gathered individual photos in a folder.

Aggregating images to share with students is an increasingly common classroom use for the tool.

And Robert Quigley at the University of Texas in Austin showed students what ad agency GSD&M did with its South by Southwest “survival board.” (He also wrote up a tips piece for news users on Pinterest and now plans to have students create a Pinterest channel for a new social media-only news agency for college students that he has in the works.)

But social curation journalism is, not surprisingly, one of the main applications for Pinterest among J-school faculty. For example, Carrie Brown-Smith, a journalism prof at University of Memphis, had students use Pinterest as part of a “social photography” assignment in a media site. She said the best Pinterest work came from students who have beats or blog topics, such as fashion, that are well-suited to Pinterest’s strengths.

Similarly, at Colorado State University, Michael Humphrey found students with an interest in lifestyle and arts, such as architecture, food or fashion, tended to lean toward Pinterest when given the choice with Tumblr or Posterous for a digital media aggregation assignment.

At Minnesota State University Moorhead, Deneen Gilmour assigned students in a “writing for the web” class to produce stories for their Doing It Downtown blog to use Pinterest as a curation tool for visuals, while using Storify for social media and Spotify or LastFM for music. One student produced an innovative story with the Pinterest boards she gathered to help guide restaurant and shop-goers to gluten-free menus items.

And Kelly Fincham, who teaches journalism at Hofstra University, came up with a clever formula for asking students to create their own Pinterest boards. “I teach Pinterest as a visual ‘SPACE,'” she wrote on the ONA Educator’s Facebook group. “S is for sourcing story ideas and trending topics; P is for promotion and publishing students’ work. A is for aggregation of pictures (with suitable copyright); C is for curating top news, and E is for engaging with others.”

WHAT ABOUT COPYRIGHT?

Pinterest is not without its drawbacks. Not all students, especially males, find it equally intriguing. USC’s Lih noted that while the site was a plus for his USC project, most students discontinued use after the class. One additional problem, he said, is that Pinterest doesn’t allow users to pin background images or those that are part of a CSS stylesheet, preventing pins for embedded logos or banners.

In the wake of the buzz over Kowalski’s posts, Pinterest’s management has tried to respond to copyright worries. The Washington Post reported that Pinterest issued a statement on March 15 suggesting that, like YouTube and other social media sharing sites, it is “protected under the safe harbor of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (PDF),” and also tries to respond promptly to any copyright violation concerns.

But blogger Christopher Mims of Technology Review suggested last month that Pinterest’s “copyright dodge” is actually a stratagem that has helped fuel the site’s growth. Rather than force users to figure out copyright first before posting an image, a la Flickr, it simply provides a flagging mechanism for copyright violation after posting. “By resolving the rights on an image after the fact, Pinterest creates a frictionless mechanism for sharing — which is precisely why the site has taken off,” wrote Mims.

Let us know — are you using Pinterest in your classroom, or planning to? Are you aware of intriguing news organization boards or innovative uses? Share with us in the comments below.

I’m using it to share geography-related ideas for the classroom. I link to photographs and articles from various online publications. I also include an occasional lesson plan or project idea. I find that Pinterest has its limitations though. I have found some wonderful lesson plans that I cannot pin because the site does not recognize it (perhaps it’s Flash-based?). Here’s a link to one of my boards: https://pinterest.com/mistermitchell3/creative-ideas-for-the-geography-classroom/

Anonymous

Teachers connected to the National Writing Project network have recently been experimenting in a variety of ways with Pinterest and other forums that support curation and sharing. One example of a Pinterest board several us worked on with our colleague Bud Hunt was created to support a panel discussion at the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning Conference earlier this month. The panel was titled “Tapping into the Multiplicity of Composition.” We decided to experiment with Pinterest as a visually centered tool to support sharing a range of student work. See http://digitalis.nwp.org/site-blog/tapping-multiplicities/3637

K. Fontes

I tried to get my tech specialist to unblock the site for my high school graphic design students, but she said they were “dangerous” boards out there…

I’m
not a lawyer but I’m concerned with copyright. I’ve always encouraged
teachers to link to images on the web rather tan copying them and
pasting them into power points . That way you haven’t taken anything you
are just linking to an existing page.
I believe that if someone puts things on a website to share on the
internet, then pinning it (linking to it) is no different than
bookmaking a page. I don’t see Youtube , vimeo, or animoto, worrying
about people book marking what’s there. Basically, all Pinterest is ,
is a large bookmarking site that saves with an image.
Maybe it is different when you pin individual images.
I’m going to keep using it until someone tells me it’s a copyright violation.

Peter Appelbaum

At Arcadia University’s Curriculum Studies Program, we have been using Pinterest to gather resources, to curate conversations, and to generate action items on a number of cultural and educational policy issues. By sharing our Pinterest posts via Facebook and Twitter, we have been pursuing an experiment in rhizomatic learning, as the various friends and followers in related social media become aware of our Pinterest activities, join in our work, and spread the Pinterest interconnections across and through these other platforms and environments.

As an educator and blogger, I use Pinterest to curate ideas. With the new issues, I only repin from bloggers I know. I also think about my followers and what content they would want. http://pinterest.com/melissa_taylor2/ But, it’s amazing how much traffic Pinterest gives my blog.

Cool and Interesting insights!! I also use Pinterest to curate my products or services. But as of educational motive, I’m great to hear about it.

Stephanie Hanlon-Nugent

When teaching feature writing, I teach my students about Gay Talese’s methods in creating collages – then we create Pinterest boards to find inspiration for what details we are going to look for. It gets them thinking about details and visuals, which are key to good feature writing.